Dr. Keith Ablow's Diagnosis Shows Us Why The Limbaugh Theorem Works

RUSH: I've shared with you the Limbaugh Theorem, which, to summarize, is essentially the explanation of how it is that even after five years, Barack Obama is not accountable, even after five years. Barack Obama is not held accountable for his policies. How is that possible? How, in a poll, can you have a majority of Americans disagree with Obama's policies, disagree with the direction the country's going -- not a recent poll. This is a poll before the election. How can you have polls like that and at the same time have Obama's approval numbers in the high fifties and Obama winning elections? How does that work?

Well, the Limbaugh Theorem explained it. It's essentially that Obama is not held accountable to his policies because he's not seen as governing. He's always seen as campaigning against what's happening. While he's making it happen, he's nevertheless on the campaign trail, as president, looking like it's a constant campaign, speaking to friendly audiences of, you know, deer-in-the-headlight-eyes college students, dazzling them with his presence, and he's talking about all these horrible things going wrong and how he's working hard, for example, to create jobs. He's working hard to bring down the deficit. He's doing everything, but there are these powerful forces that are still opposing him, and it was worse than even knew when he took office.

So while causing these problems, while creating this disaster, he's seen as trying to fix it. It's the Limbaugh Theorem that explains that.

But now, something has happened that explains why the Limbaugh Theorem works. And I understand that some of you may have had some problems with the Limbaugh Theorem because even though I explained it well, you still don't understand how it works. Even though Obama is seen as campaigning against all the stuff that he's actually making happen, how is it that people still don't attach him? I mean, after all, he's president. All presidents get attached to their policies. How has he escaped it? Well, a theory has been advanced by a psychoanalyst, Dr. Keith Ablow, Fox News, that I think goes a long way to explaining why there is a Limbaugh Theorem and why it works.

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RUSH: I'm gonna have to carry this over to the next hour, but I want to get started on it since I've mentioned it and I don't want to be accused of teasing you. Listen to this. This is Keith Ablow today on Fox & Friends. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine. Steve Doocy said to him, "So the average person might hear partisan rhetoric, but what do you hear when the president speaks? Others might hear partisanship, but what do you hear, Dr. Ablow?"

ABLOW: In the words "hostage taking," being "held for ransom," he said that the Republicans are threatening to "blow the whole thing up." There's a real victim mentality here, and it really explains the president's whole mentality and many of his policies that, if he feels victimized, and believes millions and millions of us have been victimized by America, well, then that explains why he wouldn't negotiate with hostage takers and victimizers who have kidnapped him and threatened to destroy him. And I think that's the way he feels.

RUSH: I think this is right on the money, and I've said it in my own way on other occasions. I've said that Obama was born with a chip on his shoulder and went through all of his life with it. He had people raising him and educating him, telling him how this country screwed him and his friends, how it was immoral and unjust. What Ablow has done here is attached the all-important word "victim."

Obama is a victim of America and so are all African-Americans victims of America. And when you are victims, you get sympathy, and you get accommodation. Everybody feels sorry for you, doesn't want to criticize you, doesn't want to be hard on you. You're a victim.

Obama plays that and parlays that, and this is just yet another reason why he's insulated from any criticism. The poor guy's a victim, and he really looks at these Republicans as part of the group that victimized him and his friends and his family, throughout all of his life. This country is to blame. It's exactly right.

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RUSH: This is an ongoing quest to understand how it is Obama gets away with this with the help of Dr. Keith Ablow here and Obama's establishing the fact that he is a victim, chip on his shoulder.

He is a victim of this country. But there's something crucial in being a victim. It's not in and of itself remarkable, but when you have achieved victim status, you're untouchable. The only thing permitted for victims is sympathy. You can't criticize a victim, and Obama sought and has achieved this victim status. He's almost taken up residence in it, and he's insulated from any form of criticism.

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RUSH: Now, as promised, we're at cut 17 with Dr. Keith Ablow. Here's the point about this. Limbaugh Theorem. Limbaugh Theorem establishes how Obama is not ever attached to his own policies, that Obama is always seen campaigning against what's going wrong. He's always seen trying to fix the jobs problem, he's always seen trying to fix the debt problem, when in fact he's caused it. But he's not seen as governing; therefore, he's not held accountable.

He's always out of Washington, on the campaign trail, doing what looks to virgin eyes like a campaign appearance. He has an audience, campaigning against what's wrong in Washington. Everybody goes, "Yay." In doing so, he's never attached. People do not attach him to the very policies which have caused this literal mess that we have. Well, Dr. Keith Ablow's come along and explained why the Limbaugh Theorem works. So let's grab sound bite 16. Let's do the first one again, before we get to 17.

He got a question from Steve Doocy this morning on Fox. "So the average person might hear partisan rhetoric, but what do you hear in the words the president is using?" (Replaying of sound bite) I don't doubt that for a minute. I've referred to it as Obama's got a chip on his shoulder about the country, unjustly and immorally founded. This is a slave country. The rich and the white put this country together for them.

"They got rich, and stayed rich -- and they got white and they stayed white -- by stealing from everybody, from their own countrymen and from other countries around the world, and this country," and that's why he apologizes for it, but he is a victim of it, and therefore it needs to be transformed. "It needs to be made more fair, it needs to be made more just, and we need to get rid of the absolute horrors that were present when this country was founded," and that's his mission, and it is.

He has said so in so many words. But there's another aspect to being a victim, and that is when you're a victim, all you get is sympathy. You don't get criticism. How can you be criticized? You've been victimized by something. Now, he doesn't say he's a victim, but he portrays himself as one, and other African-Americans, and he just acts that way. There's no question about it. Now, Doocy said, "Are you suggesting the president feels that he's been victimized by the Tea Party?"

ABLOW: Going back to when his dad abandoned him, when his mother left him with his grandparents, when he describes his grandmother as intimating that she didn't trust men of color, all of those things led him to feel victimized. He's grown up to be the leader of the Free World, but it's a world in which I think he believes there are people out to getcha and people to be helped. So he aspires to the corner office for retribution, in a certain way, to balance the scales, to redistribute the wealth. Because so many millions of us, he would say, have been hurt, victimized by the system, victimized by the Constitution, which is a flawed document, he would say, that's hurt so many of us. The president sees himself as the victim-in-chief.

RUSH: There's no doubt about this. This is a grand-slam home run. Now, some of you might be saying, "So what does this matter?" Well, it matters to me, and the reason it matters to me is because I think all of this is relevant in doing what we can to inform people about Obama, particularly now as they're gonna be experiencing Obamacare. Look, folks, he got away with not being vetted. The people of this country have no idea who they elected. They were able to create fantasies about who Obama was.

Many of them don't want to see the truth. Many of them don't want to think they goofed up. I mean, it's a hard road, but this is right on the money. Victimized by the system, in this case capitalism and the very United States of America. People that don't have any money, victims of the rich, victims of the powerful. He is there to fix it, not just for you, but for him, too. The Constitution victimizes people. The Constitution is a document of negative liberties, he believes.

He has sought refuge as a victim, and he's a achieved it. If you look at Obama as someone who has a victim mentality, it explains a lot, because the victim mentality relies on believing that you have been harmed and that you're not responsible for the injuries that occurred. When you're a victim, you're not responsible for what happened to you. This is in fact what's behind this latest media insanity on the name of the Washington Redskins. It's victimizing people. It's victimizing, it's characterizing, it's impugning, it's insulting. They're being victimized. They're being injured. We've got to stop this! We've got to stop hurting people in this country. We've got to start feeling sorry for people.

Also, when you're a victim, you couldn't have stopped what happened to you. A victim is entirely powerless. A victim is a mere pawn in the game of life. A victim is Mongo in Blazing Saddles. About the only fun you get to have is beating up a horse now and then. And if you're a victim PETA will leave you alone when you do it, but your suffering, because of your victimization, makes you morally superior and deserving of sympathy, and then you're immune from criticism. So if you set yourself up as a victim of the system and you're representing other victims, and the system is the country and therefore the whole country needs to be changed and transformed -- victims, by the way -- there's another aspect.

Victims are not expected to lead. Victims expect to be rescued. I think we could say that Obama is constantly rescued by the media, who also believes that he is a victim. Could we not say that the media considers every African-American in this country a victim, except those who don't feel like victims? Clarence Thomas, for example, or Thomas Sowell or Shelby Steele, these men, and women like them, they don't feel victimized by America. They're proud Americans. So they're worthy of scorn. But aside from those relative few, every other African-American is a victim of an unjust, unfair system.

This is why there's a never ending push for affirmative action, quotas and making sure that certain minorities get certain jobs. It doesn't matter the percentage is way larger than the actual population percentage, it's never satisfied, because this victimization happened from the get-go and it can never be fully redressed. That's a political calculation. And I think this synopsizes our problem in the country right now is that we are totally absorbed, whether we know it or not, with victims, people who have been victimized, used, taken advantage of, stolen from, what have you, because of the evils.

That's why political correctness works, by the way. The reason the arbiters of PC are able to get away with it is because part and parcel of all this is a lot of guilt. People have been made to feel guilty because of all these victims. The real interesting aspect of all this is that Obama himself positions himself as one. I think Dr. Ablow here is exactly right.

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RUSH: I found some things about Obama and his years as a teacher, a professor, at the University of Chicago. It turns out that Obama actually taught victimhood at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting lecturer, some such thing. I've got a New York Times story here from July 30th, 2008, and the title of the story is, "Teaching Law, Testing Ideas, Obama Stood Slightly Apart."

And from the article, Obama's "voting rights class traced the evolution of election law, from the disenfranchisement of blacks to contemporary debates over districting and campaign finance. ... His most original course, a historical and political seminar as much as a legal one, was on racism and law. ... Mr. Obama was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say. He assigned a 1919 catalog of lynching victims, including some who were first raped or stripped of their ears and fingers, others who were pregnant or lynched with their children, and some whose charred bodies were sold off, bone fragment by bone fragment, to gawkers."

He was a visiting lecturer at Chicago, and those are the kinds of courses he taught. Now, nobody denies that there were things in this country's past that are not honorable, good, whatever. But it's a far different thing to believe that's what the country is today. Our Constitution enabled all of those inequalities, if you will, to eventually be overcome, and we even fought a civil war largely over all of this. Those things don't happen in this country anymore. This country addressed its moral failings, and this country overcame them, and it did so within the framework of its Constitution.

But Obama doesn't see beyond the past. He's teaching this victimhood to his charges in class, and when it comes to teaching election law and history in America, what does he focus on? The absolute, most reprehensible parts, and then he says this is what this country is for you because of your skin color, and, ergo, he implants hatred and victimization in all of his students.

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RUSH: And, of course, what was Obama's other job? A community organizer. What is that but telling everybody that they're victims? So I think Dr. Keith Ablow is on to something.